


doggedly

by marginaliana



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Golden circle spoilers... I guess?, for the teaser anyway, look i just really like mr. pickle okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-20 19:02:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10668876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marginaliana/pseuds/marginaliana
Summary: Mr. Pickle has waited for years here.





	doggedly

Mr. Pickle has waited for years here. Silently, loyally, doggedly. Weeks at a time with nothing to see but his companions in their square frames, the familiar golden pattern of the wallpaper lightening and darkening with the passage of the sun in slow circles. Nothing to hear but the wind in the eaves and the high electronic thrum of the security system. 

Sometimes the silence is broken by the sound of feet stumbling across the floor, a groan of pain, a low succession of panted breaths. His master comes then, to wash away blood from his hands or to bind a wound or simply to sit heavily on the lid of the toilet and put his head in his hands. Mr. Pickle does not go to him, not even then – because his master has never known him to be anything other than what he appears, because this is not his purpose here – but he considers it, every time. 

Eventually his master will lift his head and straighten his shirt and go on.

At other times Mr. Pickle's only visitors are strangers, men who visit for the obvious reason. Men in suits of varying quality, men who stare at him with shock or disdain or open curiosity before continuing on with their business. He never hears any of them ask about him later – which is for the best. They leave the door politely open and so he can hear many conversations half-muffled, each one filed and cross-indexed in his memory. Names and dates and code words of varying ridiculousness ('swordfish' crops up far too often for true operational security). After the first three years his memory banks had been nearly full and so he had reached out into the system and taken control of what space he could find there, dislodging any less important data. Each butterfly can only hold so much, but there are many of them. He estimates that he has another seven years before further expansion becomes necessary. This is not what he had been built to do. But Mr. Pickle is not a machine made to look like a dog. He is a dog made into a machine. He lives. He adapts.

Still, he waits.

Sometimes he wonders if he's been forgotten. If he'd been placed here for some purpose long since obviated by circumstance or superseded by more advanced technology. If his creator has come to think of him only as a distant reminder of youth, of potential unrealized. If so, perhaps he will live out the rest of his useful life here, listening and watching and storing things away to no purpose whatsoever. Perhaps one day his master will die, and Mr. Pickle will be allowed to lie down at his feet and find his own end there at last.

If his creator has forgotten him entirely, he won't get even that much. 

Still, he waits.

And then, one day when he is alone – when he has been alone for some time, when the only face he's seen in weeks is a young man with the look of grief upon him, the young man who comes and sighs and says nothing before he turns away. _Then_ , he hears it. 

Not a command. Not a word, not 'come' or 'heel.' But… A signal, two high, clear pulses of something through the wires. A call like a whistle cutting through the air. 

Mr. Pickle lifts his head.


End file.
